by Jolie Du Prè
“He said you’ll never see him again,” says Katie. “He’s such an asshole. Let’s go find him and get our van back.”
“We can’t do that,” says Mark. “We don’t have enough gas to do that.”
“What do you suggest?” I ask.
“We should wait and see if Gary has a change of heart. If he’s not back by tomorrow, we leave in the car.”
“What happened to you out there, Jennifer?” asks Katie. “Your face looks horrible.”
“Gary knocked me out, tied me up, put duct tape over my mouth. I escaped before he could do anything else to me. A family rescued me and put me up for the night.”
Katie and Bill look shocked. “We should have gone with you, Jennifer,” says Bill. “Maybe Gary would not have tried anything if we had been with you.”
“Let’s not worry about it,” I say. “It could have gone worse. He could have tried to hurt everyone if we had all been in the van.”
“Was he going to rape you?” says Katie.
“I don’t know. But if that was his intention, I’m not surprised.”
* * *
It’s around five p.m. Mark and I arrived back at the house this morning at around ten a.m. During the time that Mark and I have been back at the house, Gary has not shown up. He’s probably gone for good.
The van has our supplies. Without it, we’re starting from scratch. Just as important, we have no extra gas for the car.
I look around for Mark. He’s standing in the home’s fenced-in backyard. The fence is high enough for zombies not to look in. I walk up to him and put my hand on his back.
“I don’t think that douche is gonna come back,” says Mark.
“Yeah, I know.”
“I say we eat dinner and then get ready to head out in the morning.”
“Mark, how are we going to make it with just the car? What about the gas situation?”
Mark doesn’t say anything.
“I think we should think about staying here.”
“Forget it, Jen. I can’t . . . I can’t stay here.”
“I know your heart is set on Texas, but let’s be smart about this.”
“We’ll go as far as we can in the car. Then we’ll have to make it on foot.”
“Make it on foot with an old man? Come on, Mark.”
Mark looks at me and then he walks back in the house. I stand by myself in the backyard. I’ve never seen him so annoyed before. But he’s going to have to face reality. I walk back in the house and re-join him.
“I want to forget about all this, you know?” Mark says.
“I know.”
He pulls me in close. “Will you sleep with me tonight?”
The smile on my face does nothing to betray my thoughts. “Yes, I’d love to.”
25.
THE DOOR IS LOCKED and Mark and I are naked in bed in one of the bedrooms. I’ve lost weight since this whole thing started, weight I didn’t need to lose. I feel scrawny. But when Mark looked at my body, he told me I was beautiful.
How does Mark look? He’s lovely. Why are some men’s bodies so perfect looking? Not a scratch, not a stretch mark, nothing flabby, nothing.
He’s kissing my neck while he places his hand on my breast. I wrap my arms around him tight. I’m wet, and I haven’t been this wet in a long time. I’ve had boyfriends in the past, but none made me feel the way Mark makes me feel now.
I reach for his penis, hard against my hand. I don’t have birth control, and I’m smart enough not to get myself into a situation I’ll regret.
This is the zombie apocalypse and there is no room for a baby in this world. But I so want for him to enter me. He puts his fingers between my legs and fondles me.
“I wish we could . . .”
“I know,” he whispers.
“I want you in my mouth.” Before he can say another word, I roll him on his back and hang over him. He has a smile on his face in anticipation of what I’m about to do.
As I move his penis in and out of my mouth, it doesn’t take long for him to, as I like to say, “Explode.” There are girls who hate to give guys head, but I’m not one of them.
* * *
In the morning, I open my eyes. Mark is lying next to me, asleep. For another night, I’ve slept all the way through it. Last night was so wonderful; all thoughts of zombies and Gary were gone.
But now, they’re back. I feel sick knowing that Gary probably won’t return. How are we going to get to Texas?
I leave the bed, put on my clothes, and walk to the living room. Bill joins me.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning. Gary never came back,” says Bill.
“Nope. He never did.”
“I look forward to Texas.”
I look at Bill. “The car won’t last us long. We’ll run out of gas. We may have to walk the rest of the way.”
“Mark doesn’t want to stay here,” says Bill.
“Yes, I know.”
“And neither do I. The way he describes his ranch, I would like to settle there.”
“Bill, what if something bad has happened to Mark’s place?”
“That’s a chance we’ll have to take. I think it’s worth it. Don’t you?”
I grin. “Yes, I guess I do.”
“Good morning, all.” Mark enters the room.
“Good morning,” says Bill. “Please excuse me while I go eat breakfast.”
I walk up to Mark, wrap my arms around him, and kiss him. “Last night was nice.”
“It was awesome.”
“Bill and I had an interesting conversation.”
“Oh?”
“He says he doesn’t want to stay here either. He says he wants to hang out with you in Texas.”
Mark smiles. “I wouldn’t mind hanging out with Bill. He’s cool.”
“So let’s get ready to get out of here today.”
“Gary never came back.”
“Nope, he didn’t. But I don’t want to talk about him anymore. We’ll be fine without him. We’ll make it.”
* * *
We’re searching the house for supplies to take with us. We can’t pack as much as we did with the van. We can only pack as much as we can carry, because when the car runs out of gas, we’ll be on foot. We’ve found two empty backpacks. Katie and I are searching the house, placing items inside the backpacks.
“So you two did it last night, huh?” says Katie.
“Yep. We weren’t too loud, were we?” I wink at her.
“No.” Katie laughs. “Mark is a nice guy. He’s not an asshole like Gary. I hope something bad happens to him.”
I place batteries in one of the backpacks. “I can’t say I don’t agree with you. He’s a jerk, that’s for sure.”
“You can thank me for your being with Mark, you know?”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Mark ended up in the garage only because I convinced Gary to let him come with us.”
“Mark never told me that. Of course, we haven’t had much time to talk.”
“We were out trying to find water, just me and Gary. We were driving this old black car. It broke down pretty soon after we found it, but we got a little bit of use out of it. Anyway, there was Mark, wandering around. When he saw us in the car, he ran up to us and then asked us if he could join us. Gary told him no. He’s like, ‘Get the hell out of here.’ But I convinced him to turn the car around.”
“Wow, how did you manage that?”
“I just kept screaming at him to turn the car around. He got sick of listening to me. So he did it. It was a good thing too. Mark changed everything for us. We were a mess before Mark showed up.”
“Yes, Mark is a born leader.” I give Katie a hug and kiss her on the cheek. “Thank you. I appreciate what you did for him.”
Katie smiles back at me. I don’t want anything to ever happen to Katie. I’ll do whatever I can to protect her, and I’m sure Mark feels the same way.
26.
WE’RE BACK ON THE
HIGHWAY, and I’m driving. How long will it be before this car is on empty? If we last another hour, we’ll be lucky. When we have to walk, hopefully someone will stop and help us. But there’s no guarantee.
“Hey, our van!” screams Katie.
Sure enough, there it is. Leaving the van are two men, carrying some of our supplies to their truck.
I stop the car and we rush out. “That’s our van,” screams Mark. “Get away from it.”
The men don’t resist us. They throw the supplies they’re carrying into their truck and speed off.
We rush over to the van. Gary is nowhere to be found. We’ve lost some supplies, but I’m holding my rifle, still loaded, just like I left it. The men didn’t take it.
“Just our luck, the keys are still in the ignition,” Mark says.
“All the gasoline cans are here. Had we not gotten here when we did, who knows?” I say.
I look out a window. The zombie walking in the distance is a familiar face. It’s Gary, or what used to be Gary. I’m sure of it.
I run out of the van to the thing that was Gary. It comes for me, growling with tiny pupils on its big white eyes. A sick black and green liquid spurts out of its mouth. It’s not decayed, but there’s dried blood all over its face and shirt from the large wound on its neck. I aim my rifle at its head and shoot. It falls. I rush up to it and shoot it again, and again. I stand and stare at its demolished face.
“Jen!” screams Mark. He runs up to me and sees the zombie on the ground. “Gary?”
“Yeah.”
“You did what you needed to do.”
“Yep.”
Mark kisses me on the cheek. “Come on; let’s go.”
We run back to the van, holding hands. Katie and Bill come our way.
“You two okay?” says Bill.
“Yeah, everything is fine. Nothing to see here,” says Mark. “Let’s get back to the van. Texas is waiting.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jolie du Pré is a full-time author, editor, article writer, blogger, and monster lover.
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Thank you for reading Benton: A Zombie Novel, Volume One. Would you please leave a two or three sentence review on Amazon? Thanks!
Look for Benton: A Zombie Novel, Volume Two in July 2014.
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